Wednesday, August 13, 2003

Friday in Dublin

From Last Friday:

9 AM Wake up. Hung over, drowsy. Fresh from melodramatic and overwrought dreams. Last night I got drunk and wrote into my laptop a letter to God describing our sordid sexual life. Then I free wrote about suicide, for an hour. More on identity dissolution than physical death.

I wake up and remember that I put chicken in the oven last night, turned the oven on, and then fell asleep. I run to see what happened-thankfully, someone turned the oven off. The chicken is tarred black. I go back to bed.

Wake up:10. The head of housekeeping knocks on my door and tells me I put the wrong tray into the oven and “could have burned the place down”. I wince apologetically and return to bed. Thinking: I am a schmuck.

12-1:30 Computer Lab. Brain rest. A scalp rack. No e-mails. Looking through Momus’s old essays, my head is filled with ideas. Reading his War As Fiction essay reminded of the rules of literary narrative; including spatial and temporal representation as they play out in political psychology.

The Sea Horse Liberation Army-Dadaist "guerilla semioticians” a San Fransisco based art group have a confusing website. Manifestos are spliced together into multi lingual jargon. Their sense of visuals are particularly strong. They seem to be able to satirize and caricature fashion trends before they begin.

I write an e-mail to Kristin and one to myself containing ideas for a column I might write. One that deals with “time lapse architecture” one deals with Post satire and another with glitch music. I look at my topics and wonder how I can possibly make them funny.

2:30 PM To my room. I upload some pictures from a floppy disk onto my laptop. I’ve got a few nice shots of Trinity College. On my disk are a few mpegs I don’t remember recording. One features my friend greg and I talking about “vanilla crayons” and then laughing. I have no idea who recorded it or what we are talking about. I save it to my harddrive for good measure.

I take out my camera and begin to snap a few playful pictures of my messy room. In particular, I attempt to graph my interests. I take pictures of some of my books focusing on the ones with pretty covers and names. I find my copy of Pussy, King of the Pirates particularly attractive. I take pictures of a few CDs. Philosophy of Momus (A Pink elephant toy floating in black inkiness) and the new Prefuse 73 record.

Bring my laundry to the launderette. On my way I see a wedding takng place at the chapel on campus. I fantasize about catching the bouquet

The launderette is actually kind of charming and fun to visit. It is in a little walled, sectioned off area past a small card-operated metal gate that makes it feel like an alley. My laundry take 40 minutes to wash and 16 to dry. I spend the time writing what I have done today and get up not once but twice to get change for the machines, which only accept 1 euro or 20 eurocent coins.

5:23 PM Folding my laundry while listening to casiotone for the painfully alone. Sliding detergent I spilled on my bed in the morning into a trash bin with my right hand, I think how I will be when I am living on my own this fall. Casiotone’s lonely low fi pop fills my mood enough that I decide to take it out with me.

Thoughts-A perfectly sculpted world.

6:50 pm Take in a cappuccino on OConnel street while wandering. Debate taking a picture of it. Raw sugar corrupts the surface foam and it suddenly seems imperfect.

Thoughts: how highly toned and formal language hides or glosses up “wit”.

7 30 PM Lower Abbey Street- A woman is screaming “Oh Jesus” and pushing baby carriage. I like the pitch at which she says this. If I could catch up with her I would try to record it.

I walk into Liffey Street Lower and see a bar called “The Prada Bar”. I snap a shot of the wonderful piece of retro advertising above the bar. It resemebles the propaganda chic, in orange and red, of Russian Futurist art experiments. Ironically, a tree limb obscures our view. People are staring at me.

Cross Wellington Quay into Temple Bar Square. Sit down and read The Butcher Boy for a bit. A man from Singapore talks into the payphone in front of me.

I walk towards Grafton street, blow a kiss to a group of girls in a bar through the window who are staring at me. They laugh.

9:59- Upload pictures while listening to highway 61 revisited. The Ballad of a Thin Man is the definitive sonic key for anything I want to write in the next few months. People around me should all be confused as I am. Do you, mr.jones?

11- Spend the next few hours recording poems onto my laptop. One in particular I wrote a few years ago while working from a chemistry lexicon, and it takes me 20 minutes to say it without stumbling on my own words.

Later: Fall asleep sober.

Note: This was actually an atypical day, mainly because I drank absolutely no alcohol and did not enter any kind of pub. Also, the times are completely invented.